‘The Force Awakens’: The Most Disappointing New Character

It’s fair to say that all of us Star Wars fans had extremely high expectations for The Force Awakens, and it’s even fairer to say that, for the most part, those expectations were not only met, but exceeded.

But I must admit, even though I did absolutely love The Force Awakens, I couldn’t help but feel extremely disappointed with one of the film’s most marketed characters: Captain Phasma.

Don’t get me wrong, Gwendoline Christie (Game of Thrones) is an absolute vision as Phasma. Her incredible chrome Stormtrooper armor and powerful, menacing stride are visually and mentally captivating, and let’s be real, she’s totally a cosplayer’s wet dream.

But while the theatrical trailers led us to believe that Phasma would be a powerful force in The Force Awakens, her actual role in the film ended up being quite minute.

We first meet Phasma on Jakku during Finn’s first Stormtrooper mission, where we learn that her First Order role is more or less just that of a supervisor. A menacing, shiny armor clad supervisor who definitely would blow off your head if you get her Starbucks order wrong, but a supervisor none the less. She writes up Finn for insubordination and does the equivalent of sending him home early from work without pay.

Phasma returns during the climax of the film, but instead of putting her badass armor and weaponry to work, she acts like a submissive dog. Our heroes were easily able to capture and bend her to their will, forcing the shiny captain to deactivate the shields around the base for Poe Dameron and his X-Wing flying homies. Her use fulfilled, our heroes then take a page from A New Hope and shove Phasma in the trash.

No epic showdown, no fight, nada.

That badass that we saw in the trailer was simply no where to be found in Episode VII, and of all the new characters introduced in the film, Captain Phasma has perhaps the least screen time (but don’t quote me on that!).

There still is hope for her character to impress us yet, as it has been confirmed that Captain Phasma (and Christie!) will return for Episode VIII, which obviously implies that she did indeed escape the First Order’s super base before it went BOOM.

Disappointing as her role may have been in The Force Awakens, Captain Phasma is sure to be a fan favorite, and with Abrams’ plan to include her in the future of the franchise, I can’t help but to parallel her character to another fan favorite with little screen time.

I’m talking, of course, about Boba Fett.

The jet-pack joyriding bounty hunter was seen in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and surprisingly enough he manages to be almost everyone’s favorite villain in the franchise despite being in both films for a combined total of roughly only 20 minutes.

Right now it appears that Abrams is grooming Phasma to be his story’s version of Boba Fett, but I do hope this initial assumption of mine proves false. Boba Fett is undeniably super cool (he’s my favorite character to play in Star Wars: Battlefront, but I digress), but Episode II aside, he really is a character with zero depth.

I am hoping that J.J. Abrams chooses to bring some depth to Captain Phasma, and I would love to learn more about her in Episode VIII. She is Star Wars‘ first female villain, and although Star Wars has always been a bit of a feminist franchise, that’s still a pretty huge deal, and not capitalizing on that fact would be a sore misstep.

Unfortunately we’ll have to wait until 2017 to learn anything more about Captain Phasma, but hey, I guess we could all use that ample time to perfect our Phasma inspired cosplay costumes.

Ugh, I dread the thought of how much that beautiful chrome armor would cost to make.

Were you disappointed with Captain Phasma’s role in The Force Awakens like I was, or were you pleased with her role? Sound off in the comments!